Monthly Archives: October 2012

A just-released joint press release from Bertelsmann, the corporate owner of Random House, and Pearson, the corporate owner of Penguin, announces that the two companies have […] come to terms on a deal to combine their book-publishing businesses.

A landmark fair use ruling: a judge in the Southern District Court of New York has ruled that Google’s program of scanning books for libraries, and giving them copies to use for full-text search is fair use. The suit was brought by the Authors’ Guild against the Hathitrust Digital Library, which holds the digital books for the library.

China has its first literary Nobel Laureate as the prize has gone to 57-year-old novelist Mo Yan. Yan is said to make use of magical realism and satire in addressing China’s recent history. His books have been frequently banned in China and “Mo Yan” is a pen name meaning “don’t speak.” Yan’s given name is Guan Moye.

Yan’s style here is maximalistic, headlong, sloppy to be sure, but bursting with life; or rather, lives — human and otherwise. A Chinese landowner is executed at the dawn of the Cultural Revolution, and the story follows him literally to hell and back, again and again as he’s reborn in a progression of animal incarnations. Each time, he winds up near his former family and participates in its dramas, goes on animal adventures, and witnesses the hardships, cruelties, and absurdities of life in China over the last half-century. Mo Yan himself shows up as a character from time to time.

First celebrated nationally in 1937, Columbus Day pays homage to Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the Americas. It is, needless to say, viewed very differently by different groups of Americans. Some people forget it’s a holiday at all. Some Italian Americans see it as a point of cultural pride. Other people — especially Native Americans — point out that Columbus personally oversaw the murder and enslavement of thousands and see the holiday as an intrinsically cruel celebration of the beginning of a massive genocide and generations of oppression.

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[Let’s] [r]eplace Columbus Day with Exploration Day.

The logic is quite neat. Columbus Day is about one guy and the actually untrue claim that he was the first person to discover America. Inherently, that’s pretty Euro-centric, which is a big part of why it sits awkwardly in a pluralistic country. But exploration is inclusive.

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August 21, 2017 we will be able to witness a total Solar Eclipse here in Illinois. Come join us at the Todd Library to “read up” on this solar event and then join with others on the campus on Monday the 21st to participate in the Astronomy planned program outside in the plaza north of Collins Hall. 11 AM to 3 PM.